On Thursday, April 30, 2026, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division announced investigations of 36 Illinois public school districts (35 districts plus Chicago's largest charter network, according to Capitol News Illinois) to determine whether they include sexual orientation and gender ideology content in any class from pre-K through 12th grade and, if so, whether they notify parents of their right to opt their children out. The investigations will also assess whether the districts limit bathrooms, locker rooms and girls' sports teams by biological sex. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said: “This Department of Justice is determined to put an end to local school authorities keeping parents in the dark about how sexuality and gender ideology are being pushed in classrooms.”
The department cited Title IX and the Supreme Court's parental-rights precedents “as recently reiterated in Mirabelli v. Bonta and Mahmoud v. Taylor.” Mahmoud, decided in June 2025, requires school districts to allow opt-outs from LGBTQ-related lessons. Dhillon told Fox News that Illinois “has a comprehensive sex education and LGBTQ education regime for its public schools, and it appears that it does not allow for parental opt-outs,” and that the inquiry would also examine whether districts facilitate gender transitions without parental notice. The department said it “has not reached any conclusions.” It did not say why these districts were chosen; one superintendent speculated the link might be a federal school-violence-prevention grant, while stressing that this was not confirmed.
Illinois law has since 2019 required public schools' history curriculum to include the contributions of LGBT people; the department's release did not mention that law. Gov. JB Pritzker called it a “sham investigation,” saying the Civil Rights Division is “now focused on belittling the rights and humanity of LGBTQ+ communities.” Sen. Dick Durbin accused Trump of “once again weaponizing the DOJ.” Ed Yohnka of the ACLU of Illinois said diverting money for education into such investigations “is just a misuse of our tax dollars.”
The announcement came the same day the Justice Department's Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias issued a roughly 200-page report accusing the Biden administration of discriminating against Christians, including over gender and school curriculum (see Trump DOJ Task Force Report Brands Biden-Era Policies on Gender and Sexual Orientation 'Anti-Christian').
Correction (October 2, 2026): This entry dated the announcement to Thursday, May 1; it was Thursday, April 30, and the date was changed. It said the task force report came a day earlier, ran 197 pages and pledged to roll back LGBTQ protections, and that the Illinois probe was the first enforcement action tied to it; AP reports a roughly 200-page report issued the same day, and no source links the two, so those claims were removed. It described Mahmoud v. Taylor as narrowly limited to one Maryland district, said Equality Illinois had criticized the probe, and asserted the investigations' costs to districts as fact; none was supported by the sources and those statements were removed or attributed.